While the walls are open
How do we place ceiling speakers before we've decided where the sofa and TV will go?
Decide the one thing that rarely changes, and plan around it. In most living rooms that is the television wall: the doorways, windows and fireplace usually leave only one sensible place for the screen. Once that is fixed, the main seating faces it, and the speakers can be placed relative to the seating even if the exact sofa is not bought yet. Sonos's in-wall manual suggests a stereo pair 6 to 10 feet apart with the main listening position 4 to 10 feet away, which gives a generous window rather than a single point.
Where the room really could go either way, we hedge. A pair positioned for general music — spread across the middle third of the ceiling — sounds good from almost anywhere, and a second run of cable can be left coiled in the ceiling for a later surround position at very little cost while the framing is open. What we avoid is putting speakers tight to a wall or in a corner just because a joist bay happened to be clear there; sound from a corner speaker is boomy, and it is usually the one thing owners ask to move.
For music in the new open living area, are in-ceiling or in-wall speakers the better choice?
For background music across a kitchen, dining and living space, ceiling speakers are usually better. They spread sound evenly over a wide area, they stay out of the way of cabinets and art, and in an open plan they do not care which way people are facing. Most of the open-plan rooms we wire in Great Kills renovations get two or three ceiling pairs on one or two Sonos Amps.
In-wall speakers earn their place when the room has a clear front, usually around the television. Placed either side of the screen at ear height, they give a more focused stereo image than ceiling speakers, and Sonos In-Wall speakers have a pivoting tweeter to aim the sound. The manual's guidance for surrounds is side walls 2 to 6 feet behind the seats and 5 to 7 feet off the floor. Many renovated rooms end up with both: in-wall at the TV end for films, ceiling speakers over the kitchen and dining area for everyday listening.
Will the 8-inch Sonos ceiling speaker fit between the joists of a 1960s ranch?
Usually, yes. Sonos lists the cut-out for its 8-inch In-Ceiling speaker at 10.125 inches and the 6-inch model at 8.25 inches. Ceiling joists in houses of that age are most often spaced 16 inches on center, and because that measurement runs from the middle of one joist to the middle of the next, the clear gap between standard joists is roughly 14½ inches. Either cut-out fits with room to spare, provided the opening is centered in the bay.
What usually decides it is what else is in the bay: a duct, a pipe, blocking added for a light fixture, or a doubled joist under a wall above. During a renovation we can see all of that, and if the perfect position is blocked we shift the speaker along the bay rather than across the room. Depth matters in shallow spaces too — Sonos gives mounting depths of about 4.73 inches for the 6-inch model and 5.32 inches for the 8-inch — so a ceiling directly under a low roof deck gets checked before anything is cut.
Should every pair of ceiling speakers get its own cable back to the equipment spot?
Every speaker should. We run a separate cable from each speaker position back to the place where the Amp will live — a "home run" — rather than chaining one speaker to the next. It costs a little more cable during a renovation and saves a lot of trouble later. If a speaker fails, it can be tested on its own. If you later decide the dining room should play separately from the kitchen, the change happens at the Amp shelf instead of inside the ceiling.
Home runs also matter because one Sonos Amp drives a limited number of speakers: Sonos says it reliably powers up to three pairs of its architectural speakers wired in parallel. With every cable arriving separately, splitting the house across two or three Amps is a matter of how the ends are connected, not where the wires were pulled. The cable itself is in-wall rated speaker wire, the CL2 or CL3 type the National Electrical Code expects inside walls.
Framing, insulation and the code
Can in-wall speakers go in an outside wall that the contractor is re-insulating?
They can, but it is rarely the best wall. An exterior wall is packed with insulation and, in many houses, a vapor barrier on the warm side. Installers on home-theater forums point out that fitting an in-wall speaker usually means cutting into that barrier, and the speaker's open back then sits in the insulated cavity. Done carelessly, the result is a cold spot and a draft around the grille in winter, and a speaker that sounds dull because the insulation is pressed against it.
Our first suggestion is almost always an interior wall or the ceiling, which gives better sound and leaves the building envelope alone. If the exterior wall is the only place that works for the room — a front window wall where the TV must go, for instance — we raise it with your contractor before insulation, so the speaker positions are framed out and the insulation and vapor retarder are restored neatly around them rather than patched afterwards.
Once the tapers and painters arrive, how do the speaker openings and wire ends survive?
Each wire end is coiled and tucked inside a low-voltage bracket or ring at the speaker position, with the room and position written on it, so the drywall crew can find it and the tapers do not bury it. The openings are either cut by the drywall crew from our marks as the board goes up, or left for us to cut with the speaker template afterwards — you choose with your contractor. Either way, the openings stay empty through sanding, because fine drywall dust and new speakers do not mix.
Painting is the other hazard. Sonos's installation manual says that if a wall or ceiling is painted after the speakers are in, the speaker flange and baffle must be masked first. We prefer to avoid that by fitting the speakers after the final coat. If you want the grilles to match a colored ceiling, they are painted separately following Sonos's instructions and clipped on at the end.
Can the workshop in our built-in garage get speakers without breaking the fire separation to the house?
Yes, if the speakers do not go into the separation. Many Great Kills houses from the 1960s have a garage built into the house, sometimes with a bedroom or den above. The New York City Building Code requires a private garage to be separated from the dwelling and its attic by at least 1-hour fire-rated construction, and garages under habitable rooms to be separated from those rooms by the same. A round hole cut for an in-ceiling speaker in that ceiling, or in the wall shared with the house, is an opening in the barrier the code requires.
So in a garage we keep to surface-mounted options: an Era 100 or Era 300 on a shelf or bracket, or a pair of passive speakers on wall brackets driven by an Amp that sits inside the house, with the speaker cable brought through in a way your contractor or electrician is happy meets the rating. If the garage is being converted into living space as part of the renovation, the rules for that room change with the plans, and the speakers go in once the new ceiling is built.
Shops, offices and the harbor clubs
Above our Amboy Road shop's drop ceiling is a return-air plenum — does that change the speaker cable?
Yes. When the space above the ceiling tiles carries air back to the heating and cooling system, it counts as a plenum, and ordinary cable is not allowed there because of how it burns and the smoke it produces. The cable must be plenum-rated: CL2P or CL3P for speaker runs and plenum-rated network cable for any wired Sonos product. New York City enforces the 2020 National Electrical Code with local amendments, and plenum ratings are part of it.
We look above a few tiles during the walkthrough to see how the ceiling is used, and the quote is written with the right cable from the start. If we find cable left behind by earlier tenants while we are up there, we will point it out, and you can decide with your landlord whether it comes out.
Can music in our Hylan Boulevard dental office help keep treatment-room conversations private?
It can help, but it is one comfort measure, not a privacy system. The federal health-privacy rules accept that some conversation may be overheard, as long as the practice has "reasonable safeguards" in place; the Department of Health and Human Services gives speaking quietly in a waiting room as an example. Low, steady music in the waiting area makes it harder for people there to pick out words from the front desk or a nearby room, and patients tend to find it calming.
What music cannot do is replace doors that close, walls that reach the deck above, or a layout that keeps the waiting room away from treatment rooms. We set the waiting room as its own zone at a fixed level, keep speakers out of treatment rooms unless you want them there, and place them so they mask the reception desk rather than shouting over it. For anything beyond that, an acoustic consultant or a dedicated sound-masking system is the right call.
Can a club hall on the harbor use the same Sonos speakers for a microphone and announcements?
Not well, and we would not set it up that way. Sonos adds a delay to anything coming in through a line input so that grouped rooms stay in sync, and its app offers line-in delay settings from 75 milliseconds upward, with no zero option. For recorded music that delay is invisible. For a person speaking into a microphone in the same room, it means hearing their own voice a fraction of a second late, which is distracting at best and unusable at worst.
The better arrangement for a clubhouse or function room is a simple microphone amplifier and speakers of its own for announcements, with Sonos handling the background music. During an announcement the Sonos zone is paused or turned down from a phone, or automatically if the venue's sound equipment allows it. The two systems can share a space without sharing a signal, and each does what it is good at.
